Dell Raises Fiscal 2027 Revenue Forecast to $192 Billion, Shares Jump on Record AI Server Demand

Dell Technologies reported fiscal second-quarter results Tuesday, September 1, that beat Wall Street on every major line, and raised its full-year guidance for the second time in 2026.

Revenue for the quarter ended July 31 hit a record $46.97 billion, up 58% year over year, according to Reuters. That topped the $44.92 billion analysts polled by LSEG had expected. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $7.04, crushing the $4.91 consensus estimate, per Reuters and nai500. On a GAAP basis, net income was $4.13 billion, or $6.34 per share, up from $1.16 billion, or $1.70 per share, a year earlier, according to CNBC.

Dell's stock moved higher in extended trading immediately after the report. CNBC and nai500 put the gain at 9%. Reuters, via KELO-TV and Global Banking and Finance, reported a 7% jump. Both figures reflect the same after-hours move; the discrepancy likely comes down to timing of the snapshot, since extended-trading prices shift by the minute.

The headline number is the forecast. Dell now expects $25.50 in adjusted earnings per share on $192 billion in revenue for fiscal 2027, up from the $17.90 per share and $165 billion to $169 billion range it gave in May, according to CNBC. Wall Street had modeled $18.92 per share and $172.67 billion. For the current quarter, Dell guided to $6.50 per share on $49.0 billion in revenue, implying 81% growth, well above the $4.49 per share and $41.42 billion analysts expected.

The Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell's data center hardware unit, generated $31.78 billion in quarterly revenue, up 89% and above the $29.61 billion consensus tracked by StreetAccount. AI-optimized servers alone brought in $16.40 billion, topping the $16.07 billion estimate.

Dell now expects $74 billion in AI-optimized server revenue for the full fiscal year, up from a prior projection of $60 billion, according to KELO-TV's report of Reuters' coverage. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said the quarter's AI server orders reached $60.9 billion, with backlog hitting a record $95 billion, up eightfold from a year earlier, per nai500. Clarke also told analysts Dell has booked more than $130 billion in AI server orders over the past 12 months and that its customer count has surpassed 6,500, spanning what he called neoclouds, sovereigns, and enterprise buyers, according to Reuters.

Traditional server and networking revenue jumped 122% to $10.53 billion, which Clarke attributed to customers needing CPU compute capacity for AI and agentic workloads. Storage revenue rose almost 26% to $4.85 billion. During the quarter Dell also landed a $9.7 billion contract to provide software to the U.S. military and a $1.6 billion hardware deal with AI cloud provider Iren for servers built on Nvidia chips, per nai500.

The PC business, Dell's Client Solutions Group, posted $15.03 billion in revenue, up 20% but slightly below the roughly $15.08 billion analysts expected, according to nai500. Reuters noted the PC unit is growing at its fastest rate in five years, driven by commercial buyers.

Reuters and Global Banking and Finance both reported that Dell has protected its margins from an industry-wide memory chip shortage by raising prices, including on personal computers. Clarke told analysts on the earnings call that price increases tied to rising input costs are baked directly into the higher revenue guidance.

For PC buyers, this raises a fair concern: if server demand from AI companies is driving up memory chip costs industry-wide, and Dell is passing those costs onto PC customers, ordinary consumers are footing part of the bill for the AI infrastructure buildout. Dell hasn't disclosed exactly how much of its price increases are chip-shortage related versus general inflation, and the company framed the hikes as necessary to protect margins rather than as a pass-through cost to consumers specifically. Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani, quoted on Fox Business coverage carried by Whatfinger, called the results strong numbers without addressing the pricing dynamic directly.

Dell shares had gained 236% year to date as of Tuesday's close, according to CNBC, versus an 11% gain for the S&P 500 over the same stretch. Michael Dell, the company's founder and CEO, is now the world's fifth-richest person, according to Bloomberg calculations cited by CNBC. "There's an old Texas saying I may have just made up," Dell posted on X after the results came out. "If you keep growing EPS 200%+ y/y something good will happen."

Dell's earnings call was interrupted by a roughly 10-minute technical disruption, according to Reuters. The company did not explain the cause. With backlog at $95 billion and full-year AI server revenue guidance now at $74 billion, the open question is whether memory chip supply can keep pace with orders through the rest of fiscal 2027, or whether further price increases land on both enterprise buyers and everyday PC customers.